08 May 2016

In my humble opinion I’m a little cuter than this guy,
at least I have hair and it’s even curly but thatt doesn’t change the
message: I got banged up pretty bad a
few weeks ago and I’m still trying yo recuperate Sadly the end is not in sight.

01 May 2016

CHIAVARI,Italy -I love this story. It’s about Italian POW’s
who were held in a camp in Southern
California during World War II. The prisoners had the run of the place and,
they could come and go as they pleased. On Saturday nights they would go to the
dances in town wearing their freshly pressed uniforms with their POW patches on
their sleeves. The townsfolk loved them, the girls were in love with them, and
when the war was over and they had to return to Italy, everyone cried.

THE
STRANGE BUT TRUE TALE

OF

ONE ITALIAN
POW CAMP IN THE U.S.A.

Near
the citrus groves and vineyards of Rancho Cucamonga, along Arrow Highway in
Southern California, stands a 15-acre complex of scruffy buildings known as the
San Gabriel Valley Labor Association. It’s a migrant labor camp that is mostly
abandoned except when the oranges and other citrus fruits are ready to be
picked. The camp today is just the shabby remains of the past.

California Dreaming

On
January 28, 1944, 499 Italian prisoners of war were shipped to the camp from
the battlefields of Europe and Africa. Before the war ended, and even
afterwards, the Italians were to have a marked effect on the area, to change
its character and, ultimately, to become a part of it.

Emilio
Pascolati of Huntington Beach has been married to his wife Penny for 34 years.
They have two children and four grandchildren. Pascolati works as an engineer
for McDonnell Douglas, and is a member of the American Legion. But in January
of 1944, he was one of those 499 Italian POWs.

A
native of northern Italy, Pascolati was born in a small town called Bassano del
Grappa. "They filmed part of the movie 'A Farewell to Arms,' by Hemingway,
right in that town," Pascolati boasts. As a young man he worked as an
electrician for the railroad. When war broke out, he enlisted and was assigned
as an Italian army artillery observer along the French border in the Alps. The
he was retrained as a tank mechanic and sent to North Africa. There he fought
British troops in places like Tobruk and El Alemain. When the Germans decided
to move into Alexandria, Egypt, the Italian troops led the advance.

The Way We Were

Things
quickly went bad, and the troops retreated all the way to Tunis. Exhausted,
hungry, and low on supplies, they gathered on a hilltop and waited for the British. The
prisoners were held for few days days in a detention camp in Tunisia and then
transferred to the custody of the American army. They were loaded on boxcars to
make the long trip across the desert to Casablanca, where they boarded a large
ocean liner commissioned by the Red Cross.

The
trip across the Atlantic took six days. "The Americans treated us very
well and the ship was a nice one," Pascolati said, "but during the
voyage I was terrified by the thought of German U-boats."

Arriving
in Norfolk, Va., on May 28, 1943, the prisoners were sent by train, but this
time in passenger cars, across country to Camp Florence in Arizona. During the
trip Pascolati was amazed at the sights. "When I saw the big factories,
one taking up several city blocks, I knew the war was over and we had
lost."

Oh, Those Italian Boys Were Full of Charm

Whatever
apprehensions he may have had about the treatment he would receive in the POW
camp in Arizona disappeared when he saw the well-fed inmates. Pascolati stayed
in Arizona for three months, where he was sent out to pick cotton with the
other prisoners. But problems at the camp, which held 27,000 prisoners, were
mounting. The problem was the political leanings of the different groups of
men. Some were Fascists, devoted to Mussolini, others were partisans, and still
others were Communists. All these groups saw the war from a different point of
view and they argued bitterly.

When
Pascolati, along with a number of other prisoners, volunteered to cooperate
with the American government, the Army decided to relocate them. Although the
ultimate destination of the men was Camp Ono in San Bernardino, 499 of them
were taken to Cucamonga as part of a deal between the Southern California
Farmers' Association and the U. S. Army.

The
war had caused a shortage of manpower in the farming areas of Southern
California. The Farmers' Association agreed to house the prisoners, provide
them with food, put them to work and compensate them for their labors. The Army
agreed to provide the security. In order to minimize problems, the Army had
chosen men who had proved themselves to be low-escape risks - among them was Emilio
Pascolati.

On
the morning of January 28, 1944, the prisoners arrived at a railroad siding in
Guasti - a largely Italian community just south of Cucamonga. Many of the local
residents of Guasti, some of whom had immigrated to the United States just a
few years earlier, turned out to greet them. Handshakes and kisses were
exchanged and inquiries made about relatives back in Italy. By the time the
last of the prisoners was off the train and onto the buses the entire group had
begun singing Italian folk songs.

Lilla
Lucas, 86, is the widow of Henry Lucas, who was president of the Southern
California Farmers' Association during that period. She was office manager at
the camp, and remembers the prisoners singing as they arrived at the camp.

Citrus Groves Back in the Day

Several
days of rain kept them from working in the fields, and so they spent the days
exploring. At one point an alarmed police officer from nearby Upland came to
the Army captain in charge, and voiced his concern about the wandering
prisoners. Pascolati remembers the captain assuring the police officer there was
nothing to worry about and they would all be back at the camp by dinner time.

Actually,
the Army could not have picked a better place than Cucamonga to send the
Italians. The area was very much like the Italy they had left behind. Around
the turn of the century a large number of Italian immigrants had settle in the
area. The climate and surrounding land are similar to some parts of Italy, and
the soil is fertile. Vineyards were planted and wineries soon followed.

This
environment, combined with the warm reception of local farmers and other
residents, made the prisoners quickly feel at home. When the rainy period ended
the men were organized into work groups and taken out into the fields every
morning.

Perry Pugno

A
military guard was sent with each group, but there was little need for one. Out
in the fields the prisoners worked side by side with the farmers and their
families, many of them Italian. At noon the women would serve lunch, and more
often than not a bottle of wine would be passed around.

Pascolati
was often invited to the house of a man he met who had come from his own
province in Italy. "The man had a niece," Pascolati said. "That
is how I met Penny."

Penny
Bianco's father had come to the United States in 1912. After several trips back
to Italy he finally settled in Cucamonga. Emilio and Penny began going
together, since Italian-American mothers and fathers had no objection to their
girls fraternizing with the POWs. To them the prisoners were just what they
wanted - nice Italian husbands for their daughters.

The prisoners
could pretty much come and go as they pleased, but most of the time, especially
during the work week, they would stay in and play cards. Almost every night the
men would hold marathon poker games. They were paid 80 cents a day for their
labors and many of them, including Pascolati, parlayed their earnings into
sizeable amounts.

And there
was never a shortage of food. Many of the grateful farmers, feeling 80 cents a
day was not enough, donated chickens, eggs, vegetables, cheese and the like to
the POW’s.

At
the end of the pruning season the prisoners were taken from Cucamonga to the
larger Camp Ono in the San Bernardino foothills. It was an official prisoner -
of - war camp and activities at Camp Ono were organized at a much higher level
than they had been in Cucamonga. There was an official soccer team, and several
local Mexican teams were often invited to play.

There
was also a talent search by members of a San Bernardino music group to recruit
singers. James Guthrie went out to the camp, and after auditioning about 350
baritones and tenors selected 75 who were featured in performances put on by
the San Bernardino Concert Association and the Redlands Bowl.

At
Camp Ono there were restrictions, but they were kept to a minimum. Pascolati
took advantage of the situation and visited Penny and her family as often as he
could.

Many
of the other men also found romance. The war was almost forgotten. On weekends
the men would slip away from the camp and go into town. Some even went as far
as Hollywood. Reality came crashing back when the war ended in April of 1945.
Under the rules of the Geneva Convention the men had to be returned to Italy.

"I
had mixed feelings about returning," says Pascolati "I would have to
leave Penny and the people I had come to know. I was happy to go back to Italy
but apprehensive about what I would find waiting for me there." Nine
months later, in February of 1946, the men were bused to San Pedro and boarded
a ship bound for home.

At
home the worst of Pascolati's fears were confirmed. Italy was economically
depressed to the point where it offered him nothing. But Penny followed,
arriving 17 months later and they were married in August of 1947.

Now
that Pascolati was married to an American citizen he was given preferential status
to immigrate back into the country. The newlyweds returned here in March of
1948.

As
Pascolati sits in his kitchen with his wife and finishes his story, he brings
out a list. It is a copy of the official roster at Camp Ono, as well as a list
of the inmates at the Cucamonga camp. Some of the names have local addresses
beside them. "There are 25 to 30 ex-POW’s living between Santa Barbara and
Orange County," he said, “all healthy and happy.”

Arial Shot of Camp Ono

For those of you who live in
California, here’s Pascolati’s list. Who knows, one of them, or members of
their families, may just be the people living next door to you.

Luciano Giudice ... worked for
Santa Fe Railroad and later owned Auto Fast Freight Company in San Bernardino.

Perry Pugno ... worked for Santa
Fe and eventually owned Perry's Electric in Rialto.

Emilio Pascolati ... became a
radio announcer in Cucamonga and later worked for Aerojet.

24 April 2016

CHIAVARI, Italy - First time visitors to
the Vatican in Rome are often surprised to see just how wedding cake fancy the
interior of St. Peter’s Basilica is. There seem to be curlicues and swirls and
chubby cheeked angels in the most unexpected places, with hardly a straight
line in sight.

St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican

The interior is the
work of GianLorenzo Bernini, but it was the man who commissioned him, Pope
Urban VIII, who demanded the flamboyant architecture. More curves, he said,
more grandeur, more drama, and he wanted it not just for St. Peter’s but for
all Catholic churches. It was all part of his plan, and Bernini and other 17th
century architects delivered.

The Catholic Church was under
attack. It was serious. Too many people were being lured away by Martin Luther
and his Reformation Movement. The Church knew it had
to fight back, and fight back hard, if it was going to stop the flow of once
faithful Catholics from joining the Protestants.

St. Peter's Square, Vatican

While new
religious groups, like the Calvinists, were preaching that churches and church
services should be simple, stripped down affairs, the Catholic Church saw
things differently. It argued that a God of greatness and power should be
worshiped with the kinds of rituals, ceremonies and churches worthy of these
divine qualities. It was this affirmation of the beauty and grandiosity of
faith that led to the development of Baroque art and architecture, elements
that would become the Church’s first line of defense.

In Rome, churches
started popping up like mushrooms after a rain. It wasn’t long before the city
began to take on a new look, becoming a city of beautiful churches, the city we
see today.

But not all Romans
were convinced the new fangle design ideas the architects were producing were
good. One architect in particular seemed to draw a lot of criticism; his name
was Francesco Borromini.

San Carlino, Rome

Time and time again
his designs would cause the Romans to stop and look, and scratch their heads
and wonder what in the world was he thinking. The curvy façade on the church of
San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, (called San Carlino by the Romans) is a good
example. What kind of person thinks a curvy façade on a church is acceptable,
the Romans wanted to know.

But it was more than
just the façade of San Carlino they objected to. When Borromini topped the
church’s bell tower with a roof that looked like a pagoda, they declared him
totally mad.

But while his flights of
architectural fancy were duly noted and loudly denounced, it was precisely
because of them that the elaborate style became known as baroque, for in those
days baroque meant abnormal.

St. Agnese in Agone, Rome (Architect: Borromini)

Borromini’s greatest
rival was GianLorenzo Bernini. Bernini was Pope Urban’s favorite artist, and
much to Borromini’s dismay, it was Bernini the Pope turned to when he wanted to
give the interior of St. Peter’s at the Vatican a makeover.

Bernini was good
choice. His work was not only dramatic but also beautiful. Ask anyone who has
visited St. Peter’s what they think of the soaring sculpted bronze canopy that
covers the papal altar in the center of the Basilica. They will most likely
tell you it took their breath away. Bernini had that kind of power.

He went on to become
one of the most influential artists/architects of the time. You see his work
everywhere in Rome: from the sculptured fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza
Navona, to the Barcaccia (boat) fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps, to
the statue of the Ecstasy of St. Teresa in the church of Santa Maria della
Vittoria.

Fountain of the Four Rivers, Rome (Architect: Bernini)

But perhaps his
greatest achievement is the colonnade that encloses the piazza in front of St.
Peter’s Basilica. To be held in that embrace as the Pope blesses the people of
Rome and the world - urbi et orbi - is truly a heart stopping experience.

By the middle of the
seventeenth century, Baroque had moved from religious art and architecture to
the preferred style for grand palazzi throughout Italy. From Turin, to Venice,
and all the way down to Sicily, Italy was soon afire with the beauty and
complexity of this new style. It was everywhere.

Palazzo Carnignano, Turin

In Turin, the Palazzo
Carignano, considered the most flamboyant private house in the 17th
century, would have made Borromini smile, while in Venice, the play of light
and dark on the ornate façade of Ca’ Pesaro could have been in a painting by
the artist Caravaggio.

In Sicily, Sicilian
architects took the curves and flourishes of Roman Baroque, and by adding
grinning masks and puffy-cheeked putti made it their own. The details in the
decoration of the church of San Domenico in Palermo will both surprise and
astound you.

San Domenico, Palermo, Sicily

Baroque began in Rome
in the 17th century as a way to give the Papacy a means of restoring
its place in the world, but it soon became so much more. As it migrated from
Rome to all parts of Italy and beyond, it inspired artists and architects,
writers and musicians around the world, and it still does today.

About Me

Hi,my name is Phyllis Macchioni and I’m a free lance writer.
My articles have been published in the Washington Post, the Toronto Globe and Mail, the Chicago Tribune, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Pittsburgh Gazzette, Women's Wear Daily and other Conde Nast publications. My articles have been translated into Italian and Arabic.